As a legal battle looms, Philadelphia Art Museum staffers head into the new year with tentative hope

As Philadelphia’s largest visual arts institution heads into the new year, it does so shaken by disorder and strife — reeling under a drama as extraordinary in substance as the public nature with which it is playing out.

On Nov. 4, Philadelphia Art Museum director and CEO Sasha Suda was abruptly fired and she subsequently sued the museum for wrongful dismissal. Two weeks later, the museum accused her of theft in a public filing. A day later, news broke that a former HR director had been charged with theft by the city of Philadelphia earlier in the year, and the museum announced its new director and CEO, museum veteran Daniel H. Weiss.

In a recent court filing from Suda’s legal team, the ousted director was described as a “visionary leader” recruited to “save a struggling museum.” Her efforts, the filing reads, “collided with a small, corrupt Board faction determined to preserve the status quo.”

Earlier this month, Suda argued for a trial instead of arbitration.

All this comes after three years of organizational turbulence that has left staff angry and bewildered.

“There’s a lot of nervousness about what’s to come now,” said one longtime staffer. “It’s been so chaotic for so long. Nobody feels steady. We’re supposed to be just chugging along like business as usual, but nothing feels stable.”

Though Weiss started at the museum this month, he will also maintain his position as an art history professor at Johns Hopkins University though May 2026.

Among the challenges facing Weiss: depressed attendance, an operating deficit, low staff morale, deferred maintenance on existing buildings, and questions about how to prioritize stalled expansion plans.

This account is based on interviews with former and current staffers, both union and nonunion, ranging from curatorial affairs to finance and operations. All of them spoke on condition they not be named.

Weiss will have to contend with a shortage of staff — which has dropped from 500 in 2019 to 375 today — following years of significant employee turnover.

During Suda’s tenure, at least 60 employees — many from the senior executive team — were fired, laid off, or pressured to leave across departments. These include human resources, curatorial, digital content, communications, facilities, conservation, the library, visitor services, and more, according to museum insiders.

Suddenly gone in the fall of 2024 without explanation to the staff was Carlos Basualdo, earlier promoted by Suda to deputy director and the museum’s first-ever chief curator; he was highly respected and held several important relationships with collectors and top international artists like Jasper Johns and Bruce Nauman.

Basualdo was named director of the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas in April.

Curator Kathryn B. Hiesinger, who had been with the museum for 53 years, had talked to Suda in the summer of 2023 about her desire to retire at some point, and discussed ideas about winding down her tenure.

“She said it all sounded very reasonable,” said Hiesinger, 82, in a recent interview.

Several months later, Hiesinger said her computer stopped working and she was called into Suda’s office. A woman Hiesinger didn’t know — who turned out to be from human resources — and Suda handed her a sheath of papers, which she was asked to sign.

“I didn’t realize I was being fired,” said Hiesinger. “I was actually quite shocked by the whole way it was handled. It was so unnecessary. All she needed to do was say, ‘I think it’s time for you to retire; let’s see how we can make it work.’ But it was just like that — shut down the computer, call me into the office and sign the papers, and that was it.”

A few weeks later, Suda called Hiesinger to apologize after museum leaders intervened. She was given the title of senior curator emeritus of European decorative arts and was told she’d be allowed to complete her pending projects for the museum.

Hiesinger has had no official contact with the museum since.

Among others who stopped working at the museum during Suda’s tenure, several were made to sign nondisclosure agreements and could not speak to the media.

For staffers that have remained, there is a sense of internal disorganization.

“We’ve had three reorganizations within three years, and we were only given an org chart [and] an understanding of it in the last couple months,” said a longtime staffer.

Ultimately, the staffers The Inquirer interviewed believe the reputation of the museum has diminished over the years. Colleagues in the larger museum world, another staffer said, “look at me sideways, because this place has gotten such a bad rap … we’ve become a joke.”

Low morale has been a longstanding issue.

In her lawsuit, Suda detailed two instances of board members allegedly “yelling and berating staff.”

At one event, an unnamed board member “verbally assaulted a Museum employee,” the suit said, leading to a formal complaint. The board member later apologized to the staffer.

The second incident reportedly happened in the winter of 2024 when the museum hosted two simultaneous events for major donor Bank of America and a group invited by Philadelphia City Council President Kenyatta Johnson.

According to the lawsuit, board member Melissa Heller was allegedly “berating staff, cursing, and shouting that the team was unprepared.” Suda alleged that a Bank of America representative “witnessed this awful altercation” and called her to discuss it. Board chair Ellen T. Caplan spoke to Heller about it and “declared the matter closed.”

Suda’s lawsuit also recounted an incident when former board chair Leslie Anne Miller allegedly screamed and cursed at Suda.

Miller declined to comment and Heller did not respond to The Inquirer’s request for comment.

Several employees said Suda regularly engaged in similar behavior herself.

“Sasha has done the same thing, [being] verbally abusive to staff, yelling at them, telling them that nobody likes them and people don’t want to work with them,” said the longtime staffer who spoke to the museum’s recent reorganizations.

The staffer worried about the museum’s diminishing reputation also claimed that the programming team became less autonomous and more risk-averse under Suda.

Managers, they said, use threats of dismissal and public humiliation, leading curators and others to feel that their jobs depend solely on the success or failure of an exhibit. Staff members are wary of Suda’s executives continuing this culture of insecurity.

“People are afraid to do their work. Curators are afraid to put on exhibitions. They’re afraid to spend money,” the staffer said. “I feel like my work has ground to a near halt. I do a fraction of what I used to do, just in a very dysfunctional way now.”

The museum now puts on fewer of its own shows, a departure from previous administrations. Some of the biggest exhibits in recent years, like “The Time Is Always Now” and “Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100,” have been touring shows organized elsewhere and adapted for the museum.

A forthcoming programmatic highlight is the show “A Nation of Artists.” Featuring art from the family collection of Phillies managing partner John Middleton, the show is scheduled to run at the museum April 12, 2026, to July 5, 2027. It was conceived before Suda’s time at the museum.

Over the past several years, the nearly 150-year-old museum has operated with a persistent deficit.

In 2025, that number was forecast as around $2 million on a budget of $62 million. The fiscal year ending June 30, 2023 was the museum’s last period with no deficit. Suda began her tenure as director and CEO in September, 2022.

Attendance has not rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. As of Nov. 30, the museum was still falling short of its goal for the fiscal year, clocking 266,282 visitors against a to-date goal of 306,750. Its total goal for the fiscal year — which goes through June 30 — is 731,000. (All of these numbers include not just visitors, but also school groups and people attending special events.)

And even that goal is a considerable downgrade from previous ambitions. A decade ago, the museum in its strategic plan stated the goal of increasing attendance to a million visitors per year within five years.

The museum’s widely panned rebrand and name change in October has proven divisive externally and internally. The campaign unveiled a new logo and changed the name of the institution from Philadelphia Museum of Art to Philadelphia Art Museum. Its cost totaled more than $1 million, according to two sources familiar with the details who spoke on the condition of not being named. Leaders hoped the rebrand would drive up attendance and cut down current operating deficits; the impact remains to be seen.

Suda’s lawsuit, staff worry, could worsen the financial outlook.

“We’re already broke as an institution. We could have a messy lawsuit that really takes a lot of funding away,” said the longtime staffer.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art Union has seen five years of disputes with management over wage increases, remote work, and dozens of labor grievances.

A new contract ratified in July 2025 ensured 3% annual pay raises and increased parental leave from four weeks to eight. But a number of grievances remain unresolved. The PMA Union, part of AFSCME Local 397, which represents Philadelphia culture workers, did not comment for this story.

After their boss was fired earlier this year, a staffer said they were expected to take on extra responsibilities, with the promise of an hourly wage increase. Eight months later, the employee has not received that compensation and has been working with the union to address the problem.

“What they would rather do is have me go to the union, grieve it, and get the lawyers involved, and that way they can drag it out for another like six to eight months and not have to pay me,” said the staffer. “But they would still have to pay me all the back pay. It’s just them dragging their feet and penalizing people. To be honest, if they get me the higher end of [the raise], it’s only 90 cents extra.”

A museum spokesperson could not respond to this claim, deeming this “a personnel matter.”

Several other staffers have had similar experiences. Under the new leadership, they hope to have these disputes resolved amicably without the need of a grievance process.

Weiss declined to be interviewed about specifics of his tasks and priorities, but the museum released a general statement:

“Daniel Weiss was appointed for his extensive leadership experience at major educational and cultural institutions. He began his tenure only weeks ago, and he is focused on learning the nuances of the museum’s ongoing operations regarding its programming, education initiatives, fundraising, and strategic planning. Mr. Weiss is currently working with senior staff to review key priorities and will address updates in the new year.”

Amid the leadership crisis and transition, staff has been kept mostly in the dark with little communication. The staffer seeking a raise shared that during the interim they received invitations for hot chocolate and parfait socials from human resources.

“It’s what the senior management do. That’s their usual MO, like, ‘Oh, well, have a cupcake,’” they said. “They treat us all like children, or like we’re all dumb. It’s pretty insulting.”

Weiss officially began his tenure on Dec. 1 but held an all-staff meeting before Thanksgiving. One staffer who attended said Weiss “said all the right things” so they are feeling “cautiously optimistic.”

“Everything he’s doing, he’s doing with such integrity. It’s heartwarming,” said a member of the curatorial affairs division.

But, they cautioned, “he’s going to lose people’s optimism if he doesn’t make any moves soon.”